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Media Matrix: On vaporwave

There was nothing compared to discovering vaporwave in 2013. You can go on all the websites for vaporwave labels such as Fortune 500, Alianthus Recordings, and Welcome Sounds, and the HTML coding is the same. So shouldn’t the feelings remain the same? Somehow they don’t. On a molecular level these webpages will never be the same.But not all is lost. From the golden era of vaporwave, the residue shines in a goldenrod afterglow on one YouTube channel: [PATRYK FILMS].[PATRYK FILMS] is a YouTube channel run by some guy who makes his own videos to vaporwave songs. I haven’t seen all of the videos, but I have seen some of them and they are very beautiful.

It’s the kind of thing where I wouldn’t want to just watch a video anytime because I feel like I need to be emotionally present for them. Thinking about these videos makes me want to cry. I’m about to cry. I’m about to cry right now. I can feel it coming. Nevermind. I can’t cry.A lot of the artists that do the music in these videos are the kind of vaporwave groups you’d see on vaporwave mixes by the YouTube account Jason Sanders. Jason Sanders makes good vaporwave mixes if you don’t look at the comments.

When you look at the track listing in a Jason Sanders video you might see artists like Mensa Group International and Infinity Frequencies. You’ll also see these artists on [PATRYK FILMS].

However, on [PATRYK FILMS] each song has its own homemade music video that complements the nostalgic vibe of the song. It’s kind of like when people compare produce from a farmer’s market with produce from the grocery store. They say things like, “Oh, the produce from the market is so much better, you have to try it to understand,” and you’re like, “Yeah, whatever, that’s stupid.”

The thing is, the homemade vaporwave music videos are actually better, partly because the comments aren’t carcinogenic

You can see a music video on [PATRYK FILMS] for a Saint Pepsi song which has 18K views. It was posted four years ago. In 2013, vaporwave was eternal. Now, videos on this channel have under 1,000 views.

But what’s so beautiful is that the spirit and vision behind the videos hasn’t lessened in quality. You can still feel the same love and divine nostalgia flowing out of each video. In this sense, [PATRYK FILMS] is a reminder that vaporwave never really died. And there’s something to the humbleness of seeing some guy continue paying homage to the spirit of 2013 — the vaporwave golden era — years after it’s lost that edginess that it used to have. It makes it all the more cozy.

“First of all, that’s discriminating against people with actual mental health issues, and second of all, it’s inherently racist because it’s saying that white people are not capable of just being bad.”

The lab has also been home to a number of Ph.D. students, not only from UR, but from universities worldwide. Students have gotten the opportunity to work at the “OMEGA” facility with state-of-the-art lasers, one being one of the most powerful high-energy lasers in the world.